Company

Growing Together at Twitter

At Twitter, we see an incredibly vibrant and diverse conversation on our service every day, and we strive to reflect this within our company. We know our best work comes from having a diverse workforce and we are constantly seeking new perspectives to make our company stronger.

A New Approach

When I joined Twitter in 2017, my first priority was to listen and learn. I spent time with leaders and employees around the world, assessing our strategy around inclusion and diversity and aligning with the newly formed people leadership team. Across the board I saw passion, authenticity, and a deep commitment. A solid foundation was in place – but the world is changing fast, and we still have more to do.

Given the unique role Twitter plays in the world, we decided to approach the concept of diversity differently. Our goal is to create a more inclusive culture and diverse workforce by developing a strategy that begins with building a foundation of respect and understanding. We’re focused on powering positive change by fostering respectful conversations, creating deeper human connections, and encouraging diverse interactions across the company. We’re calling this strategy Intersectionality, Culture and Diversity (ICD) and we’re making it a part of everything we do at Twitter.

A New Campaign

As part of this broader ICD strategy we introduced #GrowTogether, a campaign that encourages our people around the world to make personal commitments toward fostering an inclusive workplace. From day-to-day work practices and policies, to people’s engagement with leadership and with each other, we aim to create and sustain a commitment to inclusion in everything we do.

To kick off, we began a listening tour across our offices globally, mindful that the experience of inclusion is not the same around the world, or even across all of our U.S. offices. We’re activating programming for our people to foster intersectionality and respect for similarities and differences, enabling and encouraging everyone to bring every part of themselves to work. We’re also learning about what makes each office unique and special, as well as what Twitter can do better to make their experiences more inclusive.

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Inside, Out

In addition to implementing #GrowTogether, we furthered our commitment to a more inclusive world by fostering important conversations on our service, creating programs that build a culture of inclusion, and partnering with organizations that are focused on building more diverse workplaces across the broader tech industry.

We continued partnering with organizations such as Girls Who Code and Code2040 and hosted the 2017 Women Who Code Connect Conference. We also attended some of the world’s largest gatherings of diverse tech talent including ADCOLOR, AfroTech, National Center for Women & Information Technology, and Tech Inclusion, with the goal of fostering professional development within Twitter and meeting and recruiting diverse talent.

We created and implemented new programs: #EarlyBird focused on first-year students interested in computer science who identify as Black, Hispanic/Latinx and/or Native American, #TechProud brought together second year students interested in computer sciences who identify as LGBTQIA+, and #DevelopHER invited second year female students interested in computer science to Twitter.

Our Business Resource Groups (BRGs, formerly Employee Resource Groups) are instrumental to fostering diverse communities at Twitter and providing programming to help us celebrate the cultures and identities of our people. Both on the platform and off, @TwitterAlas, @TwitterAsians@Blackbirds, @TwitterOpen, @TwitterParents, @TwitterStripes, and @TwitterWomen create spaces where individuals and allies can come together. Our partnership with the BRGs, in 2017, more closely aligned their 2018 efforts with our business goals.

In 2017, the @TwitterWomen #SheInspiresMe highlighted the power of women on our service.

With our commitment to creating an even more inclusive and diverse community at Twitter, we’ve seen progress in hiring and career development and encouraged company-wide commitments to a more inclusive culture.

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Our Goals

We know we have more work to do, so we’re making some changes to our goals and how we report them moving forward. As part of our new approach to ICD, we took a critical look at our workforce and reframed our goals to put specific focus on increasing overall women, Black, and Latinx representation, areas which continue to be underrepresented in tech. We’ve set our goals for a two year period, which allows us to better assess our progress, develop specific programming, and adapt our strategies along the way. We will continue to publicly report our progress regularly as we work to achieve these goals over the next two years.

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While these goals allow us to focus on three key areas, they are just part of our overall ICD strategy. We’re implementing strategies to source diverse talent, putting forth programs that create shared ownership across all functions, and integrating an intersectional mindset into our business culture. We want to help people learn from others different from themselves, have respectful conversations, and make more diverse connections with people around the world.

ICD is becoming an integral part of what we do at every level of the company – to see what we’re up to, follow us @TwitterTogether.

UPDATE: We released our diversity report this morning which included a graph that caused some confusion. We want to apologize and clarify.

Consistent with prior years, we disclosed percentages of a category we labeled as Underrepresented Minorities (URM), which included all non-white and non-asian employees.

URM also included employees who declined to self-identify, which was not clear in the report and appeared to conflict with the race/ethnicity breakdown we reported. Based on feedback, we realized this was confusing and​ we ​removed URM percentages from our report. ​

The race/ethnicity breakdown in the report is more accurate and granular than URM which we had already decided to move away from. Our new goals put specific focus on increasing overall women, Black, and Latinx representation​ at Twitter, and we're holding ourselves accountable.

EEO-1 Report

Our EEO-1 report is prepared annually to conform to US government requirements. Those requirements categorize job functions in ways that differ from how Twitter and other companies look at their workforces, and direct the use of visual identification with respect to employees who have not self identified. Our diversity report provides the best insights into our workforce and many of our key efforts to advance our commitment to inclusion and diversity.